IMAC Online Training Academy is offering 50% off ‘Assessing and Responding to a Threat of Violence’ in the month of February.
Facebook fans of IMAC Online Training Academy will have a chance to win one of 10 $1,000 vouchers towards online courses. To celebrate the newest HRCI approved courses, IMAC fans will have an opportunity to win the opportunity to take an entire suite of courses related to workplace violence, nonviolent confrontation management, safe terminations, crisis communications, guidelines for crossing picket lines, strike security and preparation, truck hijacking, armed robbery response…and many other courses for HR training and security training.
Click here to enter and view the contest details.
Why keep up with your continuing education?
Dr. Paula Caligiuri discusses Advancing Your Career Skills on CNN Newsroom. Dr. Caligiuri is a professor of Human Resource Management at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.
HR professionals will receive accreditation towards their SHRM designation upon completion of any of IMAC’s pre-approved online courses
Ohio-based International Management Assistance Corporation (IMAC) has achieved HRCI approval for several of the courses offered at its IMAC Online Training Academy. Human resources professionals will now receive HRCI accreditation towards their Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) designation upon successful completion of any of these unique, professionally-relevant courses, available at http://www.imac-training.com.
The courses pre-approved by the HR Certification Institute (HRCI) have been designed expressly to further the careers of HR professionals, and include pragmatic subject matter developed by some of the industry’s top security professionals. Most popular of the accredited courses include an overview of workplace violence, nonviolent confrontation, high-risk terminations and work stoppage management.
Launched in early 2011, the IMAC Online Training Academy is unique in the practical and applicable nature of the training it provides. The IMAC security education team brings together respected experts who will instruct primarily on the realistic application of field-tested concepts and tactics to ensure students get relevant knowledge and techniques to equip them to succeed in the industry today. In addition to its more than twenty courses geared to HR professionals, the school also provides workplace violence training for security professionals and corporate executives.
“Our newly accredited courses for HR professionals are certain to provide a real career edge,” says Rob Shuster, vice president of protective services and training. “We are happy to have our very current and carefully-developed curriculum formally recognized by the HRCI, and look forward to imparting the latest industry knowledge, best practices, and training to as many eager learners as possible.”
In addition to the online courses, the HRCI has also pre-approved IMAC’s Labor Dispute and Work Stoppage Conference being held in Arizona from May 10 and 11, 2012. Registrants who attend both days will be awarded 7.5 HRCI credits towards their SHRM designation. For details and registration, please visit: http://www.imacservices.com/002/IMACArizona2012.php
The recent theft of a truck load of Blackberry Playbooks in the Indianapolis area (see article below), illustrates the need for an increased security measure in the truck transportation industry. At any time there are billions of dollars in goods being transported on roads in North America. During 2010 there were 899 reported theft incidents, an increase of 4.1% from 2009.
With billions of dollars worth of product in transit on a daily basis, it creates an environment where unscrupulous criminals will take huge risks to obtain a product. This in turn places employees, truck drivers especially, in situations of increased risk to their personal safety. In any theft situation ensuring employee safety is important. For truck drivers receiving Truck Hijacking Robbery training can provide the necessary skills and knowledge to assist them in responding safely and correctly in a threat situation. The training also assists them in noting important details that can assist law enforcement in their investigation. There are numerous types of GPS tracking units available that can assist in locating stolen vehicles and cargo. There are small units that the driver can keep on their person that are equipped with a ‘panic’ button which can be programmed to call a pre-set number. The units also allow ‘eavesdropping’ if the panic button has been activated so that the situation can be assessed and monitored. There are GPS units that can be placed in the vehicle or hidden inside the cargo; some are light activated that will send a signal if the shipment is tampered with. Covert security escorts are also a valuable security tool, depending on the nature of the cargo. A security escort can follow the truck and in a threat situation contact law enforcement and provide real-time intelligence to the responding units. Depending on the situation, jurisdiction and client expectations, the security escort can also intervene to protect the shipment. They can also keep trucks under observation while the driver is away, as he was in the above article.
$1.7 million in BlackBerry PlayBooks stolen from an Indiana truck stop
RIM can’t catch a break. Last Thursday, a truck carrying 22 pallets of BlackBerry PlayBooks (estimated to have 5,000 units) was stolen from an Indiana truck stop while the driver was busy eating and taking a shower. With no tracking device on the vehicle, there’s little word on the thieves or where they’re headed, although a local police spokesman has named Miami as a popular destination for stolen goods. The police believe that up to five suspects may be involved, and say they might have fingerprints of one of them; they will also be seeking help from the FBI and Interstate Theft Task Force to recover the truck and its cargo. Read more…
There is special air cargo screening, but maybe more diligent passenger screening would have prevented this incident. What skills and training do you want the flight attendants on your plane to have when a couple of passengers get drunk and rowdy? I would guess that most of the passengers on the Toronto to Beijing flight on November 28th would not be able to give you the specific names to skills required to deal with the two drunken RIM employees, but they would be able to describe them. Training in areas such as Nonviolent Confrontation Management, Use of Force and Restraint would have been practiced right in front of them by the crew members, possibly a better show then what was playing on the aircraft entertainment system. Most passengers do not realize or appreciate the level of training required by flight attendants to deal with safety and security situations, but I am sure they appreciate it when it is required.
Rowdy RIM executives ‘chewed’ through restraints, CBC reports
Michael Woods
Staff Reporter
Two Research in Motion executives who disrupted a transpacific Air Canada flight chewed their way through restraints and had to be subdued by other passengers until the plane landed, CBC News reports.
The new details in the incident that saw both men lose their jobs depict a frenzied scene on the Nov. 30 Toronto-Beijing flight that diverted to Vancouver.
George Campbell, 45, and Paul Alexander Wilson, 38, pleaded guilty to mischief last Wednesday. They were given suspended sentences, a year’s probation and ordered to pay Air Canada $35,878 each in restitution.
The pair was “heavily intoxicated” from the flight’s beginning, passing out and continuing to drink after waking up, one passenger said.
Being responsive and accommodating to clients’ needs is of utmost importance whether you are a start-up or well established company. We tend to move mountains to accommodate clients when there are few and we tend to ignore them as we grow; not realizing that the clients you started out with have come to expect the same levels of service you demonstrated at the outset of the relationship.
As an example, I will describe one of our recent assignments. We service an international client engaged in the thoroughbred horse racing community by securing fillies and colts entered into high stakes horse racing. These assignments are an equine version of ‘executive protection’ and although the concept is similar to human protection; it is different in almost every practical way. This year we got the request and due to assignment conflicts I was unable to personally handle the project as the client has grown to expect. Due to my previous experience, I had intimate knowledge of the client’s requirements, and know how to safely conduct myself inside a racing stable and around high end thoroughbreds. Constantly changing arrival and departure flight times for the horses also complicated the issue. By manipulating my schedule, by postponing less urgent assignments and delegating to other managers, I was able to make myself available, and more importantly meet the client’s needs. In doing this, it motivated the client to recommend our company services to a major thoroughbred racing organization to provide security services for their events; they subsequently requested a proposal for our services.
Being responsive and accommodating to clients’ needs is imperative for keeping current clients and gaining new ones. Another important observation is to always be open and upfront with your clients if you cannot meet their expectations. It is advisable to communicate this upfront, as the damage done by disappointing a client can be devastating to your business.
Access control policies and procedures vary depending on company requirements. Some facilities may be wide open with almost no need to control access into or any other part of the building. Other facilities may have access control requirements so strict that you need to get ‘buzzed’ in the front door before you get an opportunity to speak to the receptionist. No matter the level of access control required at a facility, the most detailed of policies and procedures are useless if the employees working in the facility do not adhere, or ‘buy-in’ to them.
Employee ‘buy-in’ starts at the top, if senior managers are not following the policies and procedures that they signed off on, how can they expect the people working under them to follow the procedures? If all employees are expected to wear visible ID badges and the HR Manager walks around the facility without theirs; how do you expect to discipline employees not wearing theirs? If the policy is that all visitors must be signed in and issued a visitor badge and the sales team refuses to do so when conducting tours with clients because they think “I don’t want to inconvenience them,” how does that look to the employees in the facility? More importantly, what does the client think? If it is a secure facility and the client is being toured around without the proper procedures being followed, it should raise a red flag for them. As a client, I would be asking myself how many other security procedures are not being adhered to and should I trust them with my product. If it is an ‘unwritten’ policy that the sales team does not have to follow procedure regarding signing in visitors, it becomes a weakness that could be exploited by somebody attempting industrial espionage or workplace violence or theft. Penetration testing is a useful tool to test the strength and compliance levels for access controls policies and procedures.
At our client’s bonded cargo warehouses in the Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver airports, the policy is that all personnel in the warehouse must wear visible identification badges. This policy is followed by everybody, even by visiting management from headquarters. Employees and security personnel are not hesitant in approaching persons observed in the cargo area and will request to see ID. I have personally observed Corporate Security managers challenged by a security guard. Even though the guard knew who the manager was, the manager did not have his ID visible; he had forgotten it in his vehicle. Was the manager annoyed, maybe, but he certainly didn’t show it and in fact thanked the guard for challenging him and went to the parking lot to get his ID. Stories like this spread quickly and let everybody know that management takes the policies seriously, conversely if a manager is not following procedures, it will get spread around as well.
In the 6 years that I have worked in the security field, access control into an airline cargo facility has been pretty straight forward, at least on paper. We follow the legislation outlined in the Air Carrier Security Measures and the Customs Sufferance Warehouse Regulations. When broken down both these pieces of legislation say roughly the same thing; the airline must ensure that there is no unauthorized access to the cargo. Failure to comply with the legislation can result in fines or a facility losing its bonded designation from the CBSA.
Complying with the legislation can be difficult. I have been in different airline cargo facilities at various airports and they all have one thing in common; the only barrier separating the loading docks from the rest of the warehouse is a line painted on the floor – the “bond line.” Depending on the size of the facility and the level of activity it is almost impossible to monitor access across the bond line 100% of the time. Distractions are limitless and include: assisting customers, security screening (inspection) of cargo, answering radio calls, dodging forklift traffic, loud noises, and sight lines blocked by cargo, writing in notebooks, etc.
The majority of illegal bond line breaches that I have dealt with are not directed threats against the aviation industry but occur through customers being unfamiliar with the rules and cross the bond line without knowing it was there. These are the people looking for a garbage can or trying to get water for their pet that they are shipping. It is their first time in the warehouse and they are overwhelmed by the experience. Some crossings are done by drivers/customers who are tired of waiting for assistance and want to find their cargo so they can leave, again not a threat just somebody pissed off. Various agencies conduct penetration tests on facilities and attempt to cross the bond line and gain “unauthorized’ access to the cargo. These are not really true threats though; a successful breach can result in fines to the specific airline carrier. To date I have not seen a bond line breach by an individual with the intent on carrying out a threat to aviation, but that does not mean that we should let our guard down.
Most cargo warehouses address these issues by employing polices and procedures to limit the number of unauthorized persons having access to the bond line.
These include:
Some airline carriers hire companies like AFI International Group Inc. to provide security to monitor the bond line area and ensure that anybody passing to the bonded areas are challenged and directed back to the public side if they do not have the proper authorization. It is a monumental task to provide 100% protection against an unauthorized person crossing the bond line. A carrier can increase the chance of detecting an illegal breach of the bond line and intercepting the individual, or individuals. Once a person has been stopped they can be interviewed to determine their intent and the threat level can be assessed.
LinkedIn
YouTube
